Companies engaged in commerce have often looked to third party rating systems for guidance when electing a potential business partner. Firms such as Moodys and Standard & Poor rate a firm's debt offerings, and Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) provides ratings about a firm's creditworthiness. With the rise of a global economy, firms have more choices for partners and an increased need for objective third party ratings.
Internet commerce companies such as OpenRatings and eBay provide ratings based on feedback from prior customers. More elaborate systems have been developed to rate distributors and retailers in marketplaces for known products, such as those employed by Frictionless Commerce. (See, for example, Guttman, Robert H., “Merchant Differentiation through Integrative Negotiation in Agent-minded Electronic Commerce”, MS Thesis, MIT Department of Media Arts and Sciences, May 7, 1999).
All of these rating systems help firms understand the prospective business partner's ability to please its customers. The weakness of such systems is that they do not take into account the idiosyncrasies of the service for which the party was rated. For example, if a party has received numerous positive ratings as a seller and shipper of record albums, that rating has little relevance if you are considering shipping services for furniture.